“I’m not going to become a media star,” Hartling said. “That’s important for the leader, not for the president.”

Hartling, a party riding president, was the first candidate to file his papers in the race to replace national president Alfred Apps. Former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps announced Wednesday she is also throwing her hat into the ring, and ex-MPs Coady and Mendes are expected to follow. But Hartling maintains this race isn’t about national stature. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

“I think it’s important that the next president not be from, or associated with, caucus,” he said. “The next president should have a real understanding, and represent, the broad membership of the party.”

Hartling knows something about the grassroots, as the Liberal riding president in Kingston and the Islands. In the spring election, he helped to propel first-time candidate Ted Hsu to victory — one of only two new Liberals elected in May, in one of only three ridings where the Liberals increased their share of the vote. Also up? Party membership. Hsu and the riding’s outgoing Liberal MP, Peter Milliken, have both publicly endorsed Hartling’s bid to be the party’s national president.

Hartling’s riding association is now the second largest in the country. But he still has a lot of delegates to woo before he can be elected president at the party’s mid-January convention.

[start_gallery][end_gallery]Ron Hartling is on a meet-and-greet tour of western Canada, visiting Liberal riding associations such as this one in Neepawa, Manitoba.

That’s why Hartling is spending September on the road, travelling from Sarnia, Ont. to Victoria, B.C., meeting with riding associations. When he’s completed that tour, it will be off to the East Coast. He will visit 60 per cent of Canada’s 308 ridings before the January election. Hartling is no stranger to travel, or meetings —he is a former diplomat and business owner.

The idea behind the cross-country tour is that the Liberals need to rebuild from the ridings up, he said.

“The next president should have a deep understanding of the real situation on the ground in all manner of ridings across Canada — urban, suburban, rural, and in the different regions of the country,” he said. “I thought I’d do it by road, where I can actually get to see people in their own context, and have some deep conversations with them as opposed to the meet and greet at the social function.”

Hartling said he’ll mainly be on the tour to listen. But his success at the helm of Kingston’s Liberal association means he has some suggestions, too.

The first is for individual ridings to create strategic plans as to how to use the next four years. “The starting point might be an honest appraisal,” he said. “Is it going to take us one, or two, or three election cycles to create the winning conditions in our particular situation?”

“That can’t be set by Liberal Party headquarters in Ottawa, because every riding has its own unique situation.”

Hartling said that, in Kingston and the Islands, the Liberal team mapped out a two-year strategic plan immediately following the 2008 election. He credits this decision with their readiness to fight when the writ dropped in 2011.

“Our party hasn’t done a lot of that – and the results have been obvious.”

Hartling will also recommend the riding associations become more involved in community issues. In Kingston, the rallying cry was around the closure of the prison farm program.

“It’s a federal issue that matters to the community. You get behind it, and you be the conduit to Parliament, so that it gets aired on the national stage. That makes you relevant to the community, and that allows you to the withstand the tides. Because you never know what’s going to happen in an election campaign.”

Hartling practices what he preaches — sometimes impulsively. He whipped out his credit card and bought two cows that were scheduled to be taken away when the program ended last year. The cows are being cared for as part of a local co-op that is maintaining a herd in the hope that the prison farm program will be reinstated.

As national president, Hartling said he would commit himself to giving voice to the members, and managing a “totally clean, high road” leadership race, throughout which he would stay “strictly neutral.”

But Hartling said the most important thing the next president needs is to be committed to reform — which, he notes, he has been on the record as promoting since 2005.

“In my view, this is our last chance to really get our act together as a party,” he said. “I am very motivated.”